PHILADELPHIA – The University of Pennsylvania men's basketball team used a season-best 17-0 run early in the second half of Wednesday afternoon's game with NJIT at The Palestra, breaking open a tie game and cruising to an 80-61 win from there.
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Penn was down by six late in the first half, but scored the last eight points to take a two-point lead into the locker room. After NJIT tied it to start the second, the Quakers ran off their 17-point stretch to make things comfortable the rest of the way.
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Penn ends non-conference play at 7-6, while the Highlanders fell to 5-10 in their first visit to The Palestra since 2014.
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Quaker Notemeal
*Penn sat seven players on Wednesday, including three of its top five scorers (
Ethan Roberts,
Cam Thrower,
Dalton Scantlebury), with various illnesses and ailments.
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*Penn had another strong shooting night from beyond the arc, hitting a season-high 13 triples on 33 attempts (39.4 percent).
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*Defensively, Penn came up with 10 steals which is a team high against a Division I opponent this season (the Quakers had 11 in the season opener vs. Rowan).
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*Sophomore
AJ Levine had seven of the steals, not only his career high but most by a Penn player in a game since the Ivy League's all-time leader in steals, Ibrahim Jaaber, had seven at Navy on December 7, 2006.
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*Levine also scored a career-high 19 points—14 of them coming after halftime—going 7-9 from the field including 4-6 from three-point land. He also matched a season high with five rebounds and dished out four assists.
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Michael Zanoni had 23 points for the second straight game, leading all scorers in the contest.
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*Junior
TJ Power posted his fourth double-double of the season, with 13 points and a game-high 11 rebounds. He also dished out five assists and had a steal.
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*Junior
Augustus Gerhart nearly had his first collegiate double-double, scoring a career-high 16 points and grabbing nine boards. He also dished out four assists.
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*Sophomore
Lucas Lueth got the start with Roberts and Thrower out of action, and finished the game with six points.
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*NJIT was led by Jordan Rogers, who finished with 15 points and eight rebounds. David Bolden topped the Highlanders with 18 points while Sebastian Robinson scored 10 and added five rebounds and a team-high three assists.
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How It Happened
The first half was a back-and-forth affair, the lead changing hands seven times and the teams tying on six other occasions. NJIT had the better of it for awhile, using an 11-3 run that turned an 11-9 deficit into a 20-14 lead. Penn used a modest six-point run midway through the period to tie things up at 22-22, but the Highlanders used their own six-point streak around the five-minute mark to go back in front by five, 31-26.
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That advantage grew to six with 2:27 to play on a pair of Robinson free throws, but Penn responded with the last eight points before the break as Levine drained a jumper,
Jay Jones knocked down a triple, and then Levine pulled up from distance and swished one through at the buzzer. That gave Penn a 35-33 lead at the break.
The Quakers' first possession of the second half was a miss, and NJIT tied things up on a Rogers bucket. It was all Penn after that, starting with a trio of treys from Zanoni, then Lueth, then Levine. They came in a stretch of 1:17 and forced an NJIT timeout.
The stoppage didn't help. Levine again dialed long distance, then came up with a steal that led to a layup. The run was 14-0, the lead was 14, and the Highlanders were calling their second timeout in 1:34.
Another minute went by on the clock before anyone scored, Zanoni again finding the range from distance to punctuate the 17-0 run (extended to 25-2 if you go back to the end of the first half). Robinson finally got NJIT back on the board, ending a scoreless streak of nearly five minutes.
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That early second-half run was essentially the game, as in the final 14 minutes of play Penn's lead never grew beyond 20 and NJIT never got closer than 13 (doing so just once, at 72-59 with 3:51 left).
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Up Next
It's Ivy League play the rest of the way this regular season, starting Monday when the Quakers make the short trip up to Old Nassau to face archrival Princeton. Tip time at Jadwin Gym is slated for 7 p.m.
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For the latest on Penn men's basketball, follow @PennMBB on X (formerly Twitter) and Instagram, and on the web at PennAthletics.com.
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#FightOnPenn
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